I'm a Chicago high school Biology teacher who paddled a sea kayak from St. Louis to New Orleans to research nutrient pollution in the Lower Mississippi River and develop a river ecology unit for my students. I was part of a team along with my wife, Sarah (she's a Chicago teacher too) and kayak enthusiast, Patrick Hanlon, who works as an environmental inspector for the city of Minneapolis. I believe that teachers need to be more than just a conduit of information to their students.

2009/12/04

I recently had the opportunity to speak about the Soggy Science Expedition and its impact in my classroom at the TEDxSMU conference in Dallas, TX at Southern Methodist University. The TEDx events are independently organized TED events that are attempting to make the TED experience accessible to more people around the world. If you are not familiar with TED, it stands for Technology Entertainment and Design. For more than 20 years, the TED conference has sought to spread great ideas from leading thinkers among invitation only audiences of the most innovative thinkers around. Past TED speakers have included Al Gore, Jane Goodall, Bill Clinton, Stephan Hawking, Bill Gates and many others. If you have not seen the TED website, they have hundreds of the talks available free online and I highly recommend viewing them at TED.com.

Initially, when I was asked to speak at TEDxSMU, I was thrilled. However, as I considered the acts that I was going to follow, (world famous undersea explorer Dave Gallo, brilliant mathemagician Art Benjamin, nationally renound physicist Amory Lovins and inspirational inventor William Kwamkamba to name a few) I became terrified. How would I be able to take the same stage as so many who are so well respected in their respective fields? When it came time to take the stage I was extremely nervous, but I went out and shared my Soggy Science experience and tried to convey the enthusiasm that I had for the project. The audience was extremely supportive and I feel like my talk was well recieved. Thank you so much to all of you who found me at the afterparty to let me know that you enjoyed the talk. Thank you TEDxSMU for giving me the chance to share my story.

My talk will be available online within the next few months at www.ted.com

It was great to meet you too. I'm still looking forward to working barefoot running into my workouts this spring! Can you send me an email so I have a contact for you? If you are ever find yourself in Chicago be sure to look me up. Thanks for your kind words.

My email address is rkylemartin@hotmail.com. I look forward to hearing your barefoot running stories. I'll let you know if I make it up to the Windy City and drop me a line the next time you're in Dallas. Take care,

Click the photo to read about recent flooding on the Mississippi River.

Learn about hypoxia and the Gulf of Mexico dead zone.

Learn about nutrient pollution.

Why are snags important for a healthy river?

Learn about Nitrogen pollution in the Mississippi River basin.

Learn about the Nitrogen Cycle.

Learn more about Feathercraft.

Click on the colorimeter to learn more at wikipedia.com

Click the photo below to read Mississippi River Corridor's coverage of the Soggy Science Expedition

The Soggy Science team approaches the Memphis Yacht Club

Click the link below to visit the Mississippi River Corridor.

Click on the link below to visit the Tennessee Water Sentinels.

Click on the link below to visit the Sierra Club's Memphis area group.

About Patrick Hanlon

Patrick is an environmental Inspector for the City of Minneapolis. His job consists of regulating land, air, and water pollution. His work directly affects the water quality of the Mississippi as he enforces the codes concerning discharge into the stormwater and sanitary systems. He is also responsible for monitoring erosion control on hundreds of construction sites across the city. Erosion is a major water quality issue, especially in terms of turbidity, dissolved oxygen and phosphate levels. Patrick also helped administer The City of Minneapolis’s Rainleader Disconnect program which seeks to prevent Combined Sewer Overflows from entering the Mississippi. In 2007, for the first time since the late 60’s, the program eliminated the discharge of hundreds of millions of gallons of combined untreated and sanitary/storm water from entering the Mississippi.

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About Me

For the past seven years, I was a high school biology teacher at a public high school in Chicago. I am now pursuing the idea of being a teacher scientist in another arena as I pursue a PhD in evolutionary ecology at the University of Virginia. I recently gave a TED talk at TED 2012 http://blog.ted.com/2012/03/02/how-we-know-about-evolution-aaron-reedy-at-ted2012/